Green Syndicalism

The surge in environmentalist sentiment in the US should give those of us concerned with the labor movement pause. Progressives across the country, especially younger activists and liberals, have become more actively engaged with green issues than any other social cause in America. The public has followed suit, forcing even an oil-baron administration such as Bush/Cheney's to make token comments on green issues. Ecological action has acquired a momentum that other progressive movements would do well to replicate.

There are myriad reasons for this, though ultimately I will focus on one broad cause. In large part this is simply a question of timing. The catastrophic Bush adventurism in the Middle East has focused America's attention on our oil dependence in a way unmatched since the '70s. At the same time, venture capital and technological development has progressed to a point where industry is willing and able to pursue serious green startups. The internet allows producers and consumers a way to link directly, bypassing retail oligopolies. And of course, there is the burgeoning reality of global warming, and the crisis that confronts us if we fail to act swiftly and intelligently to prepare for its effects.

All of these factors create a perfect storm for a growing environmental movement (in terms of consumer action, popular sympathy, and governmental influence). But I want to focus on three basic qualities of the environmental movement that seem most relevant to the labor movement. Two are positive, one forms the basis of some positive critique.

*Environmentalism offers local and diverse opportunities to act in the world. Instead of a strongly centralized movement, we see a cultural force emerging. That force is undergirded by a wide array of organizations, small and large, practical and ideological, and this internal difference allows tremendous adaptability to local conditions and new events. It also allows people to weave the movement into their daily lives in many different ways, increasing the proportion of citizens who actively identify with the movement or its values.

*Most importantly, environmentalism has the quality of a values-driven movement. Its strongest proponents are not simply motivated by pragmatism; they have a worldview and life informed by the movement's values, meaning they devote every aspect of their waking hours towards those values in some way or another. Ecology is not something meant only to reform a broken system, it proposes alternative ways of viewing the world to those dominant American society- material pleasure and consumption at any cost.
Environmentalism has effectively generated a values-driven movement based on reforming basic structures in American life. Such movements have transformed American society in the past, merging enlightened self-interest with the general betterment of humanity.

*Environmentalism (as it now stands) is possibly the most individualistic progressive movement in American history. Its chief expression currently lies in consumer action and individual economic desire. It is based in a wide field of institutions, organizations, clubs, etc, but its massive popularity at present is expressed mostly through consumer choice or electoral action.

Even the most developed "ideology" of environmentalism and ecology is openly hostile to large formations of people. It works through affinity groups, or a major desire for localism. There's nothing wrong with this, if the visions for democratic confederation of local groups actually come to fruition. They don't. This means that instead of relying upon the grassroots community action that most environmentalists and ecologists deeply advocate and treasure, the movement functions through some genuine grassroots action, lots of consumer action, and ultimately dependence on the government to force positive change through regulation or big business to redirect the economy out of sheer good will and wisdom.

I think this will neuter the environmental movement in the long-run, despite its popular appeal and overt strength. The movement will continue but it will be much weaker and move much more slowly than it might.

Environmentalism lacks effective, grassroots, collective organization, that can apply itself across society instead of simply pressuring governments and oligopolies.

The only social movement that can possibly deliver this type of organization is organized labor.

Labor and Values.

I believe there are deep, foundational reasons for the unification of labor and environmentalism, but those are for another time and place. The simple, straightforward reason to unite labor and environmentalism comes from a shared enemy: a business logic based in generating profits and responding to stress by externalizing internal cost and responsibility. To a company, the logic of laying off or outsourcing workers is the same as the logic of dumping pollution into the oceans, land and air.

Corporate logic brings labor and ecology together, because corporate logic thinks of both labor and nature as weak and expendable.

Practically, ecology needs the power of labor organizing to actually build grassroots community action that will allow exponential leaps in green transformation of the nation and world.

Labor needs ecology to make it more of a values-driven movement.

The question of labor's decline has been debated in books and articles and conferences and union halls for decades. I have no desire to enter this debate. It is heated and necessarily imprecise, based on the contingencies of history and global/national politics.

But I will say this- Labor functions most effectively as a movement when it is seen as a matter of values, when people think it offers the possibility for creating a better world. Bread and butter matters are important, but it is also important to charge people up, offer them a vision of something worth fighting for, offer them strong ideals to which they can devote their attention and life.

The structure of social movements, chaotic as they are, makes this hard to see or even to demonstrate. But it seems that the most powerful social movements are those with a large pool of members devoted to building a better world, especially in the ranks of upper and middle leadership.

Just to break the ice on this point, we cannot understand the success of the labor movement in America in the 20th century without understanding the broad appeal of anarchism, socialism, and communism among the American working class until the clear and distinct disgracing of those latter ideologies by Stalinism, whose effects were felt in America through McCarthyism and driving the organized left out of the unions. In a certain sense this a question of leadership. People do not have the strength in them to organize and fight the rulers of society out of a simple desire for another dollar an hour. Values and movements give them that strength. A vision of bettering the world gives them that strength. Knowing that that however small a trace of their actions will survive them in the form of a transformed world, this gives people the strength to organize and fight.

Right now labor in America does not have this, because it has no larger vision for a better world. It has a vision of late 1950s Keynesianism, minus the structural racism and sexism of that period. I'm not saying this is bad or wrong, I'm saying that it clearly just isn't enough.

I don't want to focus on criticism, at the end of the day it has little value. I'm just trying to say, we can merge these movements effectively to their mutual benefit.

How Do We Merge?

There have been major efforts to bind together environmentalism and labor in the past few years, and they have proven tremendously effective. I'm thinking for instance of the Apollo Alliance, the joint effort of major unions and environmentalist groups to promote political action to rebuild sections of the American economy on green technology.

The major efforts though are very top-down, at least within major unions. I think this is necessary but limited.

We need a general greening of existing industry to be really effect necessary changes in society. Now, to do this we could relie upon the efforts of managers and labor chiefs and heads of green organizations. This is slow.

We could also try and tap into the workforce of a business completely, mobilizing the energy of workers to transform their businesses from the inside out. If successful, this would be very, very fast. A mass of decentralized organizations thoughout every business, every sector, focused on the value of reducing negative environmental impacts and even contributing positively to the natural environment, would have inconceivable effect across industry.

Here's my proposal:
That a major union organization (preferably the AFL-CIO) sponsor an independent, cross union confederation.

That this confederation be open to three types of organizations:
*caucuses within already unionized workplaces
*minority unions within nonunion shops (especially in open-shop states)
*small democratic firms and nonprofits focused around environmental work

And finally that this "dual union" focus broadly on greening the workplace.

I'm taking as my structural model the old IWW (and to some extent the Knights of Labor). I mean rimarily to invoke the structure and not the ideological connotations of those organizations or labor history in general. Their organizational versatility is perfect for a labor-oriented values-based movement.

I do not mean to promote the traditional adversarial relationship the IWW had with larger unions. This confederation should have some independence from larger union structures as a whole, though, if only to minimize bureaucracy in organizing and actions.

This offers several basic benefits to both environmental activism and the labor movement.

Environmentalism gets a major infrastructural support for green action across America, and immediate partners in any firm or business.

Labor taps into the energy of the environmental movement, along with the interest of political and economic leaders in environmentalism.

Labor also receives a mechanism for bringing energy into its own locals. Finally, in the form of green minority unions, labor gains a new technique for organizing unorganized workplaces, a technique that will immediately draw out public support and potentially lessen managerial resistance.

Conclusion: Stewardship

I have focused on a mechanism for green syndicalism, but environmentalism does not provide the only possible grounds for organizing values-based hybrid unions. The only real requirement is direct application of an ethos into the production process itself.

Several other value systems present themselves. For instance, the American economy and American political logc is driven to a large extent by militarism, especially in the current climate of outright piracy perpetrated by recent administrations (either through war and occupation or by imperial trade policies). The anti-war movement has found itself without practical direction besides electoral action. Yet there is no shortage of work that must be done to change this feature of American life so basic that we often see only its most blatant expressions. Alongside environmentalism, we could see a hybrid union devoted to demilitarization of the American economy and American life.

To remake itself for a new century, Labor must build up its basic principles, the values that every unionist in the country will respond to and draw hope and strength from. This is a simple enough task but an important one, because it allows members to contribute their efforts towards long-term goals beyond the drama, stress and danger of immediate conflicts.

Just to get the juices flowing, I'd like to suggest a simple code of Labor Stewardship, that recognizes and enshrines basic values flowing organically from the experience, rights and responsbilities of working.

Some basic principles of Labor Stewardship would include the following goals and ideals:

*empowering,democratic workplaces
*community/civic responsibility and assistance
*environmental responsibility and a focus on ecological-design
*"open source” knowledge, encouraging participation of all employees(and the public)in innovation

Principles and values are tools to be used for concrete action in the world. They are important because they allow us to make concrete connections between our myriad actions and intentions in the world. Considering those principles at the start will give a vibrant movement coherence and strength, a strength based on an upwelling of diverse and devoted labor action.